From Mohawk College
The College Student Success Innovation Centre (CSSIC) at Mohawk College announced today that Daniel Schmidtke has been selected as the college’s inaugural CSSIC Research Fellow.
Schmidtke, a research associate (academic) for the McMaster English Language Development (MELD) program and an affiliated researcher in the Centre for Advanced Research in Experimental and Applied Linguistics (ARiEAL) at McMaster University, will lead a project geared toward enhancing student success in Mohawk College’s English for Academic Purposes (EAP) program through a reading intervention.
“We are pleased to award Dr. Schmidtke with this first-of-its-kind fellowship as Mohawk College and CSSIC continue to advance research around student success in post-secondary education,” said Mohawk College VP, Academic, Dr. Cebert Adamson. “The work that will be done through the CSSIC Research Fellowship will support applied research in student success while developing tangible best practices in the field. As is the case with all CSSIC research, we are confident this project will benefit students, practitioners, and researchers at post-secondary institutions across the country.”
In collaboration with the CSSIC team, Schmidtke will conduct research on phonological decoding (the process of mapping printed letters to spoken sounds), an especially important sub-skill of reading for learners acquiring English as an additional language. The goal is to provide crucial support to these learners, including international students, who face the challenge of acquiring English reading proficiency in order to study effectively.